The limestone at this locality (actually an impure metamorphosed magnesian limestone) was discovered by Ensign James Noyes (b. 1657), and worked beginning in 1697 -- the first "lime quarry" in colonial Massachusetts. Before this time, lime used for mortar for construction purposes was derived from oyster and clam shells.
According to De Alcedo et al. (1812): "In a quarry of limestone here is found the
, or incorruptible cotton, as it is sometimes called." The poet, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), alludes to this asbestos in "The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury" (1859) with the line "Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den."
The name "Devil's Den" originated with local schoolboys who frequented the abandoned quarry beginning long before 1819. The boys would chew the asbestos, which they called
. (B.P., 1819)
Parker Cleaveland (1780–1858), the famous American geologist and mineralogist, first collected minerals here in 1811. His half-brother, Rev. Dr. John P. Cleaveland (1799-1873), recalls the day: "I well remember the forenoon of a warm day in the first week in June in 1811 when he made his first visit to the Devil's Den in Newbury. ... It had been visited once before by a Professor from Harvard, and once by some Professor from foreign parts; but its riches were reserved for my brother's eye. He returned to my father's house with one or two candle-boxes filled; and my mother's kitchen was at once turned into a laboratory, and the floor strewed with fragments of every variety which the den yielded . . . No miser ever worshipped his money as he did these specimens. Many of them which I helped him reduce and pack up that day have long had a place in French, German, and Russian Cabinets." (Woods, 1860; Ewell, 1904).
locality.
21 entries listed. 13 valid minerals. 2 erroneous literature entries.
Sewall, Samuel (1697): Diary, vol. 1, p.458. in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 5, 1878.
Belknap, Jeremy (1780) Letter to Ebenezer Hazard: Dover, August 28, 1780, in Belknap Papers (Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. II – Fifth Series, Boston, 1877).
Hazard, Ebenezer (1788): Letter to Jeremy Belknap, May 10, 1788. (Collections of the Mass. Historical Society, vol. 3, 5th series, 1877).
A request for 3 - 4 lbs of "asbestos."
Morse, Jedidiah (1792): The American Geography, 2nd ed. (London: John Stockdale), p. 183.
De Alcedo, Antonio; George Alexander Thompson, Aaron Arrowsmith (1812): The geographical and historical dictionary of America and the West Indies, p. 232.
Cleaveland, Parker (1816): An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard), p.153.
B. P. (1819) [name not recorded]: An Essay on Asbestus (
Journal of the Times, Baltimore, January 30, 1819; Originally in the
Newburyport Herald)
Vanuxem, Lardner (1823): On the
Marmolite of Mr. Nuttall (
Philosophical Magazine and Journal 65:88-91, 1825)
Robinson, Samuel (1825). A Catalogue of American Minerals, With Their Localities, p. 63.
Cushing, Caleb (1826): The History and Present State of the Town of Newburyport (Newburyport: E. W. Allen), p. 38.
Hitchcock, Edward (1835): Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts.
Hitchcock, Edward (1841): Final Report on the Geology of Massachusetts, Vol. 1.
Coffin Joseph and Bartlett, Joseph. (1845): A sketch of the history of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury from 1635 to 1845. (Boston: Samuel G. Drake).
Whittier, John Greenleaf (1859): "The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury" (
Atlantic Monthly, March 1859).
Woods, Leonard (1860): Address of the Life and Character of Parker Cleaveland, LL.D., 2nd ed. (Boston: Joseph Griffin), p. 39.
Balch, David (1869): List of Minerals Collected in Essex County, and Arranged in the County Collection of the Peabody Academy of Science (First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Peabody Academy of Science)
Wadsworth, M. Edward (1878): On the So-Called
Tremolite of Newbury, Mass. (Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 19:251).
Crosby, William O. (1880): Contributions to the Geology of Eastern Massachusetts. (Occasional papers of the Boston Society of Natural History, Volume 3)
McDaniel, B.F. (1884): Geology and Mineralogy of Newbury in
Bulletin of the Essex Institute, volume XV.
Essex Institute (1885): Report of the Annual Meeting Held Monday, May 18, 1885. [Description of field trip of Oct 13, 1884]
Crosby, W. O. and Greely, James T. (1888):
Vesuvianite From Newbury, Mass. MIT Technology Quarterly, Vol. 1, pp. 407-408.
Sears, John Henry (1894): Geological and Mineralogical Notes, No. 9 in
Bulletin of the Essex Institute, volume XXVI.
Currier, John J. (1896): "Ould Newbury": Historical and Biographical Sketches (Boston: Damrell and Upham), pp. 421-423
Ewell, John (1904): The Story of Byfield: A New England Parish (Boston: George E. Littlefield), p. 194.
Sears, John Henry (1905): The Physical Geography, Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology of Essex County
Clapp, C. H. and W. G. Ball (1909): The Lead-Silver Deposits at Newburyport, Massachusetts and Their Accompanying Contact-Zones (Economic Geology, 4(3):239-250).
Daniels, Elizabeth (1931): Devil's Den (
Rocks & Minerals 6:28).
Rocks & Minerals (1938): 13:183.
Bartsch, Rudolf (1941): New England Notes (
Rocks & Minerals 16:56).
Sinkankas, John (1959). Gemstones of North America, Vol. 1, p.544.
Beard, Robert (2008): Enter the Devil's Den (
Rock & Gem v. 38, no. 8).
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